Don’t Cry Wolf When There Isn’t A Wolf. Even If You Don’t Care About Your Credibility, Chances

When you lose someone,

Sometimes you’ll cry

Sometimes you just sit there devestated

Sometimes you are so far detached you can’t think

Sometimes your numb

And never for one second think that your response isn’t enough, because pop culture doesn’t get to tell you how you should respond to grief. You loved them and they are gone. No matter how you respond, it is enough.

Ed Sheeran and live (bad) country is not a combination I thought I’d hear in my life. And now I wish I hadn’t.

Being able to read journal articles critically is also such an important skill. I’ve been reading journal articles since late high school, but it’s only been in grad school that I’ve learned how to approach them critically. Fortunately there are a few questions you can ask about any study that will help you decide how much you trust the results even if you know nothing of the field.

What journal was the article published in? Some journals are far more reputable than others. Usually a quick Google search can inform you of if a journal is considered reputable.

Do the authors list any conflicts of interest? Conflicts of interest aren’t an immediate red flag, but if the author has a strong incentive to only publish certain results then I’ll definitely be taking a second or third look at the study.

Who funded the study? If Coca Cola funded a study that says drinking one soda a day is beneficial to your energy levels, I’m not trusting that implicitly.

Is it peer reviewed? Peer review can fail, but this is the quickest test for if a study is good or not.

What are the limitations of the study? This plays into the assumptions the author made. Were the experiments only done on white men (often the first standard in medical research though it’s getting better)?

Similarly do the authors list their limitations? The best articles will have a short section on limitations or a paragraph in the discussion about limitations. I am always slightly wary when no limitations are listed.

What is the sample size in the study? This number will usually be found in methods. The bigger the number, the better. However, there are a lot of standards for what the minimum sample size should be. In small animal research, you’re usually looking at a few dozen mice or rats. In larger animal research, you may be looking at less than ten animals (pigs, horses, cows). In human trials (also known as clinical research), it tends to be dependent on what the study is on. Knee replacements probably 15 people or so. Spinal cord trauma would be more like 5 people. (Social science will also have different minimum sample sizes but I’m not familiar enough to give estimates. In general subjective surveys require a lot of people. More objective testing done by researchers will have less people involved)

How many citations does the study have? This one can be a little more hit or miss. An article published a year or two ago may be great and have no citations. While an article published fifty years ago may have a hundred citations but have incorrect information (in this case it’s usually that methods have improved and new information was discovered instead of poor research quality). Niche topics may also be hardly cited despite being good articles.

There are other questions you can ask like “Can I follow the methods?” “Does the interpretation of their results logically follow from their results?”Etc. but those tend to be harder the less familiar you are with a field. And if you’re reading about a study in a news article like CNN, Apple News, etc. there are different tricks to determining how much you trust them (I tend to look for hyperbole and rhetorical devices. One time I found a news article saying physicists had figured out faster than light travel. They were referencing a theoretical mathematics paper that stated using several assumptions hyperluminal travel is mathematically possible)

What I learn from Science & Technology Studies is that you shouldn't blindly trust science because there's a fair amount of fuckery (mostly unintentional but sometimes not) going on in the background, but you also shouldn't *not* trust science in the way that most people who don't trust science don't trust science.

Anyways, hope that helps!

I’m not sure how you got that I don’t want people to vote from this. I want more people to vote and less people to jump to revolution as the first thought when something goes wrong. I know a lot of people who think a full on Civil War is coming. Do we believe that our system is so broken that it’s time to pick up arms? That’s a pretty extremist point of view from anyone.

Perhaps using revolution instead of revolt or war made it a bit less obvious I was talking about a form of violent uprising against the current government. But it’s cool to know that you think rioting is an appropriate response to any political discussion instead of voting, emailing your political officials, protesting, etc.

Vote please. Voting is one of the best things you can do. Revolutions historically don’t work and I understand there are situations where they are necessary, but I fully believe the USA isn’t at that point yet. Voting is still the answer.

I wonder how the prevalence of revolution stories in our (United States) literature and media (hunger games, divergent, etc.) has introduced the idea that revolution is the first thing to do when a system is broken. How has that idea convinced people that rioting may be the correct thing to do (Capitol riot, George Floyd riots, etc.)?

If you are scared to listen to a viewpoint, because it might change your mind, you need to reevaluate your own viewpoint.

I think my profile picture says it all.

if you had to choose one pokemon to be your absolute favorite out of every pokemon which one would you choose. its okay to choose a "basic" one

Be unapologetically you. Sing in your car, dance in the grocery store, jump off the sidewalk. Do the things that make you happy.

You have to be willing to let other people be vulnerable to you to get to know them.

Spite is a valid motivator